Researchers learn to make their work more reproducible at COS workshop

Researchers learn to make their work more reproducible at COS workshop

08 November 2016

How can we increase the openness and reproducibility of quantitative research? This was the central theme of a workshop on openness and reproducibility, organised by the Center for Open Science (COS) on 2 November 2016.

The workshop, which took place at the Snellius Building, was attended by students and professional research staff from a variety of scienctific disciplines: from Human Genetics to Psychology, Computer Science and Bioinformatics. The main aim of the workshop was to teach researchers easy, practical steps to make their work more reproducible.

Using example studies, attendees created a reproducible project from start to finish. The workshop covered many relevant topics in the field of data management, such as project documentation, version control and pre-analysis plans. Participants were introduced to the Center for Open Science’s Open Science Framework, an open source tool which can be used to easily implement these concepts in a scientific workflow.

Platform for future projects

The participants were enthusiastic about the clarity and well-thought structure of the workshop. Several attendees said they would certainly try and use the Open Science Framework as a platform for future research projects. As one participant phrased it, ‘I never really thought about centralizing the tools and data I use in one application. It certainly sounds useful, especially if everyone in the project is on board with it. I was also very impressed with the technical details (API, version control, integration with other services), everything seems to be there!’

The COS workshop was organised in collaboration with the Leiden Centre of Data Science and was taught by Courtney Soderberg, Statistical and Methodological Consultant at the Center for Open Science.

(JvdB)

The Open Science Framework (OSF) is an open source software project that facilitates open collaboration in science research. More information on the OSF can be found here.